The present invention relates to the preparation of a continuous loop inductor for a RF-EAS resonant security tag circuit useful in conjunction with an electronic security system.
Presently there are two basic types of RF-EAS security tags commercially available. One type is a reusable tag which can be fastened to the products desired to be protected, while the other is of the disposable type that can be adhered to the packaging in which the products are packaged, or prepared as a part of the packaging material itself. These tags utilize technology based on tuned circuits that operate in the radio frequency range. An example of the disposable type is disclosed in applicant's pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/362,614, assigned to the present assignee herein.
The disposable tags use discrete inductor and capacitor elements that are applied to a dielectric substrate. Such elements may be formed by conventional fabrication methods for forming printed circuits including selected use of laminated substrates having an interior dielectric layer laminated on both surfaces with a conductive composition such as aluminum or copper. The conductive layers may be printed with an etchant resistant material in the form of the desired circuit, and after etching, the remaining conductive material forms the desired circuit. Alternatively, the resonant tag circuits can be formed by an additive process whereby an activatable composition is printed on a dielectric substrate in the form of the desired circuit. Likewise, the circuits can be formed by stamping or die cutting the circuits out of thin metal sheets which are then adhered or laminated to the dielectric substrate. Efforts to print inductor loops using conductive inks are disclosed for example in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,442,334 and 5,781,110. However, conductive inks generally have a resistivity nearly one order of magnitude greater than solid metals such as aluminum. Likewise, the fabrication of inductor elements using die-stamping techniques (or, alternatively, die-cutting and subsequent transfer), especially of an inductor foil containing many thin loops, is a difficult and exacting process since fracture of the loop at any point results in an open circuit and ineffective inductor. Thus there remains a need in the art to develop a method and or technique to successfully apply inductors to substrates in the fabrication of RF-EAS security tags.